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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27897514">the years that pass</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/'>Anonymous</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Vinland Saga (Manga)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Brief mention of past rape, Brother/Brother Incest, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Mild Feminization, Sibling Incest, Wife Kink, crude language, mention of past underage</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 17:15:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,024</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27897514</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A lot of things have changed with time. Some never will.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Torgrim/Atli (Vinland Saga)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Anonymous</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the years that pass</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Still @vincestsaga on twitter 👍</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>"Listen, this doesn't make you the woman," Atli's brother tells him, hovering over him and leaning down to speak in his ear as he waits on his belly to get fucked for the first time.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"No," Atli agrees, afraid that it does and aware that he's going to let Torgrim do this with him anyway. He doesn't want to be womanly. He's only just become a man. Even going back to being a boy would be better than being like a woman.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But it was becoming a man that made him want this. And either way, whether it's woman or boy, being anything but a man means he can't be with his brother anymore. But he wants this, he can't think about anything but his brother touching him like men and women do alone in bed—even if he's the woman. The kind of touching they've tried before this is good, but it's not the furthest men can go. With women. Even if he has to be the girl, Atli wants his brother to have this.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Don't worry." Torgrim touches the back of his neck, then moves the hand around to his jaw, petting Atli from behind the way they've been practicing in bed before they fall asleep. His knees are planted on either side of Atli's legs. There's a whole pot of grease by Atli's elbow, the same amount it takes to help pull a lamb out of a ewe. His brother's not going to let this hurt him. The side effect is that the whole affair smells like a lambing, but it's a familiar smell, at least.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I'm not going to—?" It's a stupid question. He's old enough to know better, and he stops himself before it's all the way out.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You know where sheep get fucked to get pregnant." Torgrim keeps rubbing his jaw, and Atli can't help pressing into it. He doesn't know if women do that when men touch them. "Don't worry. Your beard'll come in a year or two just like everyone else."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It feels strange being on the ground like this. Like a deer pinned down by a hunter, about to breathe its last. "I know." The backs of his knees feel cold. Torgrim's not sitting on those as closely. Atli touches one heel to the other nervously. "I just don't want to be different."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"You won't be. I won't let anything happen. There's nothing says you have to be womanish after this. Don't ever think about yourself like that."</em>
</p><p>"My pretty little wife," Torgrim sighs into his ear, teeth scraping against the lobe as if he's barely trying to avoid a bite. "Ohh, fuck."</p><p>Atli doesn't mind if he bites. Torgrim gets so pent up these days, it's good to feel him excited.</p><p>"My needy bitch in heat." Now he does bite, not on the lobe but on the harder shell up top. "How's that?"</p><p>"It's good."</p><p>Torgrim won't bite anywhere he already has scars. As half-mad as he is sometimes during sex, he takes care about that. It only makes the scars more prominent in Atli's mind—they're hardly visible from a few feet away—but his brother seems to think they're still raw and bleeding. When he's like this, anyway. In his other mood, he'll stare very solemnly, or touch Atli's neck from behind without warning, and ask to be reminded what these are again. It's a bit of a fixation, in either mood.</p><p>When Atli looks at the burn marks on his brother's hands—nothing large, just a few marks like people pick up sometimes—when he looks at those, he wants to cover them up and kiss them away. But he  doesn't want to see Torgrim look down at him and refuse to ask where they came from. He reached for his food too eagerly one day, before the pot was off the fire, and cried so much over it that Atli couldn't bear to punish him. He promised never to do it again, and it was some time next year before it happened again. Again, there was no punishment. He'd changed and changed back by then, and sometimes he just can't remember new things he's learned. The children are better at watching him now.</p><p>He never did anything like that his first time round. The two of them kept an eye out behind each other, their whole lives, and made it well into adulthood with only a scattering of old nicks and cuts. They made it through the band's collapse without a blade meeting either of their bodies. And these days, even when Torgrim's feeling like himself, he doesn't have much to do but guard Atli from anyone who might want to add to his count of scars.</p><p>There's no one like that around here, of course, but Torgrim likes to think of the village as a nest of secret thieves and rapists just waiting for him to lower his guard. He might've been right, twenty years ago, but the two of them are all that's left now. And no danger to each other. Atli doesn't feel as if he's any danger to anyone. Not anymore.</p><p>"People might get ideas if I don't get you knocked up soon."</p><p>They're supposed to be newlyweds, as far as Atli can work out, in this persistent fantasy of Torgrim's. The details change, but the general idea is that he's the sweet little wife doing his best to conceive, and all work is on hold until his husband makes it happen.</p><p>They're still brothers, of course. There are no fantasies where they aren't brothers. Even in their younger days, when they'd play-act sometimes as strangers, there was still an unspoken understanding. It's impossible to imagine being born any another way.</p><p>Maybe this is an attempt to make Atli feel young and vital again, instead of a man in his middle forties who's been held down and used by stronger men than this. Even if he were sixteen again, it's undeniably an old man riding him now. They both huff and puff, and Atli's joints, at least, make themselves heard too. Not exactly the kind of wedding bed young brides dream about.</p><p>It's the wedding bed he has, in any case. He doesn't feel much younger, but with his hair down and his arse stuffed full, a man's strong arms around him, he does feel well and truly taken in hand. As a good wife should be.</p><p>"Just the two of us," Torgrim murmurs to him, and Atli doesn't fight the groan of contentment that comes out in answer. He loves his family, and this is what gets him off. It doesn't matter right now. It's what his brother likes.</p><p>Torgrim used to like talking about Atli getting passed around, but if he still likes that, he hasn't mentioned it since Atli came home. They're always alone now, in fantasy. And Atli knows his brother's fantasies of a two-person existence go well beyond the sexual. He's thoughtful enough to keep his mouth shut about it, and that's what Atli thinks about when the other side of Torgrim misbehaves. He's only ever good to his little brother, when he's in control of himself.</p><p>"You're so small," Torgrim says, cupping his hip, thumb stroking where his hipbone sticks out. "You don't eat enough." His voice dips into that tone of concern he uses now. "How is it? Good?"</p><p>"Good," Atli says thickly. Torgrim thinks he gets tired. Thinks he thinks about the other men. He asks how Atli's feeling so much it gets tiring. He ought to be able to tell, after thirty years.</p><p>"All right," Torgrim says, relieved. "That's fine. You just let me do the work. There you go, baby."</p><p>Atli lets him do the work. His weight on top is a comfort. Permission to rest. His big brother in charge, like it used to be. He's always liked getting fucked. And he likes his husband getting to feel the man he is. A good wife lets himself be taken care of.</p><p>His own wife's usually more engaged than this, come to think of it. And she's never been the kind of helpless wreck he turns into now. The kind he never was when he was young. She doesn't lie in his arms afterwards, too exhausted to hold back the tears if they decide to come. The way he lies in his brother's arms while his brother waits for him to sleep.</p><p>It used to be they fell asleep together. And he could roll away, if Torgrim got to be too smelly or hot or loud for his taste. The way he is now, he'd have to ask to be rolled over, and his brother would have a week's worth of questions about what it meant for him, emotionally.</p><p>The thing is, he'd never ask. He likes the helpless feeling. If he can't be master of his body, at least his brother can be.</p><p>"Sweetheart," Torgrim says, stroking his hair. Careful not to pull like he used to. "Don't worry. Don't you worry."</p><p>
  <em>Just because you can't move past something that happened to you <strong>once</strong>—</em>
</p><p>He doesn't want to say that. Not really.</p><p>For the first part of his life, Atli knew he and his brother were like everyone else in the world, except they had each other. For the middle part, he knew that nobody else could find out what they were like when they were alone. Now, in the last part, he's finally come round to the fact that it was never a question of the world not understanding. It's a question of Atli himself being strange from the very beginning. He's needed his brother too much, all his life.</p><p>It's taken a lot of thinking to get here. To the realization that it's not being normal he misses. It's a time before he had to <em>think</em>. So that, if nothing else, proves they're brothers to the core. Torgrim's just the one with the willpower to take himself there. Atli doesn't have the strength to stop being himself. He needs his big brother to fuck everything out of him. He's always been the one who needs it more, and his brother obliges because Torgrim always takes care of his little brother.</p><p>"You're ready, sweetheart." His brother's hand touches the underside of his jaw, tracing a line up to his ear.</p><p>Being told so is enough.</p><p>He's not sure exactly how Torgrim knows, but it's natural enough. They've known each other's bodies their whole lives. He can tell in the dark which of his children is getting out of bed by the sound of the creak, and he can tell from his wife's breathing how close she is to falling asleep. And he and his brother can move together without looking, each knowing what space to fill before it's emptied. Some of his first memories are moving to find his big brother's warm arms in the dark. They'd heat each other up, there in the straw, and Torgrim's legs would wrap around one of his, and it's no wonder he's never wanted anything else.</p><p>Climaxes—the kind his brother gives him—leave him tired and worn out and defenseless. And completely safe. The cum inside him feels warmer than the stuff between their bellies, but long experience has taught him it comes out of them at the same temperature. It's some trick of the mind. A nice one.</p><p>"There you go." Torgrim sounds the way he did back when they were starting out. Absurdly proud, as if his little brother just invented cumming. He peers down and Atli knows he's checking.</p><p>"I'm fine," he murmurs. He almost wants to cry, this time. His face must be so warm. He can hardly tell.</p><p>"‘Course you are," Torgrim says, stroking his cheek. Doing a bad job of pretending he's not feeling for tears. Atli closes his eyes and accepts it. He makes his brother worry.</p><p>He hasn't come inside his wife in a while. Hard to tell how much she likes that part. But they're both done having children, and that's the main point of it. Meanwhile he's been enjoying it since he was thirteen. There are some benefits to being born an unmanly man, after all. Getting to lie here full, on his back with his cock pressing into his brother's gut. And no worrying about a kid on the way.</p><p>Not the usual kind of kid, anyway. Torgrim wears him out more than any of his others, honestly, but of course that's what his big brother worries about the most. So that'll stay a secret.</p><p>"Ready to sleep?"</p><p>"Not yet," Atli lies. He wants to think about how full he feels for a little longer. "Talk to me." He doesn't bother masking a pathetic little noise of disappointment when Torgrim pulls out.</p><p>"Whiner." Torgrim tweaks the tip of his nose, very gently. "Let me lie down, for the love of Thor."</p><p>"If you really have to." Atli turns away, as well as he can, and the grunt of Torgrim lowering himself on one arm makes him turn back. His brother exhales in a heavy puff, struggling to catch his breath for a second, and Atli presses himself as close as he can. "Sorry."</p><p>It's fickle, womanish behavior, and he doesn't care. His hips and tailbone sting from all the rolling around, as if reproaching him. His brother just puts an arm round him and grins. He never complains about his joints while they're in bed together.</p><p>"Baby. You want to know something? You were like a kitten that first time." Torgrim laughs, with his whole chest, the way he used to. "I couldn't tell you, you'd've cried. But you were such a tender little thing, and you kept pressing your little face into me. I felt like such a brute."</p><p>"I was face down," Atli says, annoyed with himself for being irritated, when his brother's laughing like this. "You were the one pushing your little face into me, the first time. Don't you remember?"</p><p>It was only the day he found out how much he likes being what he is. His brother's wife. Torgrim might at least bother to remember the way it really happened.</p><p>Torgrim sighs heavily, fingers tugging at his hair for a second before he remembers. "Maybe you're right. I'm sure it happened like that once, at least."</p><p>"Of course it did," Atli assures him. He hates to hear him sound old. "But the first time. We didn't think of trying it face to face then."</p><p>"Right." It's hard to tell if Torgrim is remembering or just agreeing. Atli pushes on, hoping to jog his memory without having to remind him.</p><p>"How'd we both know, the first time? That it was me going to be face down?"</p><p>"You're my baby brother, that's how I knew."</p><p>"I mean the real reason." It's because he was always like this. His brother must've known it even if he didn't.</p><p>"What do you mean, real reason? Who needs a reason? Besides," Torgrim goes on without pausing, "we had no idea what we were doing. Not then. You couldn't bear it if you hurt me by accident."</p><p>"No," Atli says after a moment. "I suppose I couldn't have."</p><p>"You've been so sweet, your whole life. You used to shake, back when you were learning. And then one day you stopped, all of a sudden." Torgrim's hand stills in his hair. "Like I was crushing something out of you."</p><p>"You've filled me up enough to make up for that."</p><p>Torgrim hardly seems to hear him. "Like a little baby deer. When you stopped I knew you were growing up, but..."</p><p>"How do you know what little baby deer do when someone fucks them?" Atli moves an elbow and feels it make contact, as though very far away. His body isn't fully connected at the moment. "That wasn't scared shaking. I was horny. It's nothing to worry about."</p><p>He bends his neck groggily and Torgrim brings a hand to his mouth for a kiss.  Not on the scar—it might kill him to wonder where it's from—but on the hands that have taken care of Atli every day of his life.</p><p>"What's that for?"</p><p>"Nothing."</p><p>"Nothing! With all I do for you?" Torgrim's knuckles brush across his cheek, and a rush in the pit of Atli's stomach reminds him how tight his brother's arm would have wrapped around his neck and shoulders, once, daring him to struggle. He would've made a show of fighting back, and if he lasted long enough they'd be ready to screw again.</p><p>Now he's old and ready to sleep after a single round. "For fucking me, then. Who needs a reason?"</p><p>When sex first became something more than an idea to him, the only way Atli ever pictured it was his big brother holding him. It was something men and women did together in bed, and that was <em>bed</em> to him, and <em>together</em> as well. His horizons have expanded since then—he's been fucked in enough different places to know beds don't have to enter into it at all—but it's a comfort to be that way again. For both of them. Torgrim doesn't know how much good it does him, being in charge, but he'll be his old self in the morning, and for a few days afterward. Not on full alert against the whole world.</p><p>"Your arms," Torgrim sighs despairingly. "You don't eat enough wings. That's the kind of meat goes to the arms."</p><p>"Don't squeeze," Atli says, his eyes closed. "I'd rather you get ‘em all, then."</p><p>"How d'you expect to keep any weight on?" He does squeeze, but in the way he knows Atli likes. "Picky little thing."</p><p>The more he teases, the less reason there is to worry. If anything's really wrong with Atli, he'll know, and he'll take care of it like he always does. In his brother's arms, seconds from falling asleep, it's easy to forget that there's anything else in the world outside the two of them. And that's exactly what Atli chooses to do.</p>
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